Monday, January 19, 2015

My life's been a bit chaotic the last couple of months for various reasons. My study and tactics time has gone to complete zero. I've been reading novels and watching some programs and movies as well as dealing with some health issues.

On the other hand, I have continued to play. Right now I am in 3 leagues. Two on chess.com and one on ICC. I also have been playing with two of my regular partners. On the bad side here, I have missed some of my games due to the chaos, and I haven't been to the Wednesday club in at least 2 months. Also a third regular partnership seems to have fallen apart. We both cancelled several times and then we kind of stopped contacting eachother.

I think I am playing ok though. I generally feel pretty happy with the quality of my games lately. It also seems like I am pulling away from my two regular partners in that I am winning significantly more games than I am losing. I will say that I have noticed a phenomenon where sometimes when I study something for awhile, I will hit a wall, and when I take a break and come back I will actually do really well at it. So I think taking a break sometimes can be good.

Lastly, I've decided to give up the lessons again for awhile. I was a bit dissatisfied with the format where he had me doing problems during lesson time. So I just felt it wasn't worth it for what I was getting. I will say I think he is very nice, his prices are good, and there were several perks, like homework to do away from lessons and some games he would pick for me to look through in my specific opening variations. The game review sessions were decent, just not as much of the lesson as I wanted. Sometimes it seems that lessons are really important, but I've tried two different teachers and always feel kind of ho hum. Maybe if I could afford Dan Heisman I would feel different about lessons.

So we will see how things continue. Right now I am enjoying playing when I play, but I am having issues with my overall chess motivation.